A Different Immortal: Side Story
by Lotus1974
Summary: A one shot from chapter 2 of my TMNT xover story of the same name. Takes place after horsemen arc. Unbetaed review please. May continue if enough people interested.
1. Chapter 1

**A Different Immortal: Side Story**

Highlander version of chapter 2 phone call. Unbetaed, reviews make the world go round.

So please review and if interested the story is listed in Ninja Turtle category.

Joe Dawson limps over to the bar to get more drinks for his friends. Things have been tense between Adam and Duncan since Bordeaux and Joe has been trying to break the ice, but it seems to be failing. Adam Pierson, a twentyish year old man with brown hair, hazel eyes and a prominent nose, wearing a baggy sweater and jeans, sits with his hand wrapped around an empty bottle of beer. Duncan Macleod, a thirtyish year old man with long black hair in a ponytail, brown eyes, wearing a dark blue silk shirt and slacks, drinking a glass of scotch.

As Joe starts to go back around the bar with the drinks the phone starts to ring, he

picks up. "Joe's, this is Joe speaking. How can I help you?"

"Is Adam Pierson there? I have to talk to him" a young girl asks.

Joe looks at his friend, trying to get Adam's attention, and when he does, signals him to come over. "I don't know… there might be someone by that name here. I'll see if I can find him. If I find him who do I say is calling?" Adam is standing beside him; he covers the phone and asks him "Adam, someone is on the phone for you. Why is some girl calling you her, Adam?"

"Just tell him Rachel needs to talk to him."

Adam looks at him and says "Who is it? I have told a few people I can be reached here but you know most of them." Joe looks at him and says "She says her name is Rachel and she needs to talk to you."

Adam grabs the phone from Joe "Rachel, are you alright? What's wrong?"

He hears laughter on the line "I'm alright; I just need your watcher connections."

"What happened? Where are you? Do you want me to come there?"

"I got into a fight here in New York city. I need to know if he had a watcher and what he saw. A guy was trying to help and got caught in the quickening; it's him and his three brothers that I'm worried about. I need any record of them to disappear totally." Rachel tells him. "I don't need you here. I know you would come if I asked you to and if I needed you I would tell you, but I can handle this, besides the guys are kind of shy around people, even me." She says with a laugh.

"I may have to tell Joe. I'll need his help, he is the head of the North American branch. He can help but he will need a good reason. So I will have to tell him something." He tells her while looking at Joe's curious expression.

"Do you trust him? The guys were wearing costumes and looked like giant turtles, so I don't want this getting out, if you know what I mean?"

"I do, and I trust Joe. He knows my name and hasn't told anyone, but I won't tell him about you without your permission. I know how important secrecy is for you." Joe looks happily surprised at Adam's trust in him and curiosity about her.

"If you trust him that is enough for me. Tell him whatever you think is necessary. I trust you, father."

"You have no idea how much it means to me, that you trust me. I've missed that, trust." Joe looks at him strangely at what he is hearing. "I love you, daughter." Joe is stunned and really wants to know what is going on.

"Love you too, Dad. I better let you go you have a lot of explaining to do and thanks for this. I knew I could count on you. Talk to you soon. Good-bye"

"Good-bye, Rachel. Talk to you soon." She hangs up the phone; Adam does the same and looks at Joe who is looking at him as if he can't decide what to ask first.

Unfortunately, before Adam has a chance to answer any of Joe's unspoken questions, Duncan walked up to them curious as to what is happening. "What is going on here? Joe are you alright? What happened to him? Adam, what did you do?"

Adam looks at Duncan resigned to the fact that he can't forgive Adam for the past. "I didn't do anything, except have a conversation on the phone, not that I need to explain myself to you. Joe if you can get yourself together enough to placate the Boy Scout, we can get to work on that project. I'll be waiting in your office." Adam walks into the office taking a fresh beer with him. Joe is pulled out of his shock, and realizes just how badly Duncan has been treating Adam, lately.

"Mac, I'm fine, and you should go easy on Adam. He is not the person that he was and you of all people should understand that. If you will excuse me, Adam and I have a lot of work to do. This doesn't concern you, and we will be a while so you might as well go. I'll talk to you later. Think about what I said about Adam, if I can understand and forgive him why can't you?" Joe takes the bottle of scotch with him into his office to join Adam.

"Alright, Methos, who is Rachel and what parts of the watchers oath will you, be asking me to break this time.

Adam smiles at Joe "I see you got rid of the Scot."

Joe smiles back " I gave him a lot to think about and sent him home".

"All I need is to find out if there is a report on a challenge last night in New York."

"Who was it Adam?" Joe asks.

"I honestly don't know, it may not even exist."

"Well I'll see what I can find." Joe says as he starts looking threw the reports from last night. "Alright, this might be it, Jack Miller, killed by unknown immortal, looked like a teenaged girl. She took his head after being gutted, surprised she lived long enough. What appeared to be a giant turtle was caught in the quickening. She was protecting him when three others arrived. They left together and I lost them. That's the end of the report. I assume the girl mentioned is Rachel, right?" Joe asks as he puts the report down.

"Yes Joe that is Rachel. She was only fourteen when she died. I was her teacher, as you might have guessed. What you don't know is that she is the oldest female immortal, and the second oldest period. Joe you know how hunted I am and most think of me as a myth. Imagine what would happen if it got out that a fourteen year old girl was in truth a four thousand year old immortal? She would be hunted and so would any young female immortal that might be her." Adam looks at Joe as he drains the scotch from the glass, and remembers what happened recently. "Joe, one of her students can never find out that I am her teacher, you can't tell anyone, promise me, Joe."

Joe looks at Adam "Who is her student, Adam?"

Adam looks Joe in the eye as he says "Cassandra, and she learned everything and I mean everything from Rachel."

Joe looks at him "You mean she has the voice, like Cassandra?"

"Yes Joe, she does and unlike Cassandra, it works on me and always has. She is the strongest immortal out there. Joe, if she wanted, she could be 'the one' but she is afraid of losing her temper and I am the only one that can stop her temper from taking control. Joe, she lost her temper once and gave the memory of the Horsemen a run for their money. She was brutal and relentless, she killed everyone that crossed her path for one hundred years. So she plans to have herself killed after avenging my death, if necessary. She is that frightened of her temper or she would win the prize without question. Her voice is the least of her powers. She has magical abilities as well."

Joe stares at Methos. "What the hell do you mean? Just how dangerous is she?"

"Joe, if she loses her temper she will make a dark quickening look like a walk in the park. One time Kronos grabbed her arm, he was going to take her to his tent and rape her, she calmly told him to let go of her or she would castrate him, he let her go and never crossed her again. Does that answer your question, Joe?"

"How can a kid be that dangerous?"

"When I found her she was emaciated and completely insane, begging me to let her die, in a language that hadn't been spoken in two hundred years. I not only had to teach her about her immortality and how to fight but I had to put her mind back together again and help her learn how to control the strange abilities she developed almost overnight. She is five foot six inches tall and slightly built, for her to survive when most female immortals die before they ever know they are immortal she had to be more dangerous then the rest just to survive. I was determined that she would survive no matter what I had to do."

"Man, she sounds like an amazing person. I would really like to meet her sometime. When you talk about her you sound like Mac when he talked about Richie. I have to meet the person that can do that." Joe laughs at the horrified expression on Methos face.

"You are a laugh a minuet Joe, and I would like to introduce the two of you. You would get along great, but with the way things are with Mac I don't think they should meet. She is very protective of me and wouldn't like how he is treating me, and I wouldn't be able to hide it from her with her mental abilities. She would without a doubt kill him or Cassandra if she found out that she was going to kill me. The strange thing is that if I die I would want Mac to be the one to take her head if necessary. He is one of the few that I would trust with that kind of power, ever the Boy Scout. I miss her. I haven't seen her since the late forties, she was in Auschwitz at the end of the war, and Silas saved her. They were about to cut off her dominate arm when Silas and the liberation forces arrived, she was so scared when she got to me. She kept rubbing her shoulder as if in pain, they had started to cut into her shoulder. I helped her threw that and we went our separate ways. She calls to make sure that she can reach me when ever she needs to, since I move around a lot. Maybe when things calm down in New York we can ditch the annoying one and go see her." Methos says as he looks kind of sad.

Joe hopes that maybe this call will help him find his balance once again after Bordeaux. Having someone around that knows what he was like then and accepts that he is not that person anymore. What he really needs is the unconditional acceptance that only she can give him.


	2. Chapter 2

**A Different Immortal: Side Story chapter 2**

Joe Dawson sits in his office thinking about what Methos had told him, and the situation with Adam and Mac. He hopes that Mac takes what he said last night to heart. Just then in walks the tall Scot, wearing a grey shirt and black slacks.

"Hey Mac, what brings you by so early?" Joe asks hoping that this visit is not about Adam's phone call last night.

"Joe, what has he done now? What kind of trouble is he dragging you into this time?" Mac demands.

Joe sighs and shakes his head in disappointment, "I told you this didn't concern you. I also remember telling you to go easy on him. I guess you listened to that as well as everything else I said. You are really screwing things up with him, you know that? Or do you just not care?"

"After everything that he did to you and Cassandra, you expect me to just act like nothing happened! I can't do that Joe! Bordeaux was just the last straw; he would have let Kronos release that virus if I hadn't stopped them. How can you just pretend like it never happened?" the impassioned voice of Duncan Macleod asks of his friend.

"I remember that the only reason you found them was that he left clues for you to follow. He didn't do anything to me, what he did do could have gotten him _killed, _and what happened with Cassandra happened over three thousand years ago, and should have no bearing on today, he is not that person anymore and you of all people know that. The person that she knew would never have tried to get you to take his head because he knew neither one of you could beat Kalas but you could if you took his head. Adam did just that didn't he, Mac? And he respects you a lot, in spite of how you have been treating him. Have you noticed the pain in his eyes every time you treat him like he is some kind of monster? Mac, how can you treat him like that? Especially after he helped you with that dark quickening, at great risk, you could have tried to kill him, and now you turn your back on him when he needs you the most." Joe tells the Scot remembering that he lost three people that he had been very close to for a very long time, and was unable to even morn them because of Mac, one of them he killed himself and another was a double quickening he shared with Mac, that had to make this situation even harder on Adam.

Maybe getting him to New York needs to take priority; Adam needs someone to take care of him right now. Yesterday there were times that he remembered that although Immortals grow and learn that a part of them mentally and emotionally remains the same age as physically, and he figures that Methos was about twenty one to twenty four years old when he died, and he needed someone to take care of him, that was probably why he gravitated to Mac, he needed to take care of everyone so why was he so blind to Adam's pain, the expression on Mac's face means that an Immortal is nearby.

"I guess I'll ask him what kind of trouble he is dragging you into this time." Mac says as they both head out to the bar.

As expected Adam is waiting for them, Joe notices something wrong immediately. Adam has on a tan sweater and an old faded pair of jeans and is sitting slumped in the booth the three of them were in yesterday staring at his hands, that was the problem they were empty, Adam always grabbed a beer as soon as he walked in. "Adam, are you alright? Want me to grab you a beer on my way over?" When Adam just shakes his head Joe tries to get to him quicker.

Mac looks at Adam for the first time and it is as if he is really seeing him for the first since Bordeaux and realizes what Joe was talking about how he could have missed this Adam looked so young and lost and that pain and grief were so strong it was almost palatable. What could have done this? Joe is just as surprised so at least some of this is new since last night. He sits down next to his friend and puts his arm on the back of Adam's chair, Adam surprises both when he leans back against Mac, who puts his arm around his friend to find him shaking, Mac pulls him closer. "Adam what's wrong?"

"I . . . I can't tell you. You wouldn't understand, or care anyway." says the young tearful voice. Joe has joined them now and is sitting across from them. Glad that Mac is helping Adam, when Joe hears his answer he realizes what is wrong, talking about Kronos and Silas last night made him miss them and he is finally grieving for them. He's right, Mac wouldn't understand I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to be that close for over one thousand years and still be drawn to each other three thousand years later and then to betray and kill them. I don't know how he kept it together this long, I'm just glad that although he doesn't understand Mac is here to help him through this, at least until we can get him to Rachel. She will be able to help a lot more because she will understand how he feels.


End file.
